Search: “mis”

Back in 2003 I bought the very original Roomba. They had just come out a few months earlier and the idea of a robot vacuum cleaner fascinated me. It was around the same time I was fascinated with Sony’s robot dog, the AIBO, but unlike the AIBO, I could actually afford the Roomba back then.

I was still living with my parents when I got the Roomba so it really only had to clean one room, my room. It was fun using it at first, but I eventually got bored and sold it since I stopped using it. Looking in the comments of that for sale post I found a comment of mine where I explain to a reader why I sold it. I was basically too lazy to use the Roomba since it had to be started manually. This meant I had to be in my room to use it or I had to remember to do it before I left the house for work. It also meant that it would keep going until the battery died and then I had to plug it in and charge it again. It was a chore that defeated the whole purpose of getting a robot in the first place. In that same comment, I mention that if they ever came out with “a version that cleans every day at a certain time without me interfering” then I’d get it another one which brings me to the Eufy Robovac.

One of the first things I did once the pandemic started was to tell my housemaid to stop coming over. This meant I had to clean my place myself which gave me a reason to get a new robot vacuum cleaner. I looked at what was available locally and found the Eufy RoboVac 30C at Blink. I hadn’t heard of Eufy before, but on Amazon it had a 4.5-star rating and over 4,500 reviews. Blink was selling it for 92KD which was around 5KD more than Amazon not including tax or shipping so a pretty good price and so ordered it.

I’ve been using the RoboVac on a daily basis and even though the first few days were a bit rough, it’s now been a few weeks and I’m loving it. The RoboVac 30C has a few cool options, it has Wifi, a 100+ minutes battery life, it can find its way back to its home station and recharge the battery when it’s low, you can schedule it and it also works with Alexa and Google Home. Thee 30C is considered to be a dumb robot in the RoboVac world. There are some RoboVacs that are a lot smarter and can draw and map out the whole room digitally and even recognize different objects on the floor (like actually be able to tell if its a shoe or a basketball). But those RoboVacs are a lot more expensive with some of the more expensive ones costing an upwards of 300KD. The way dumb RoboVacs work is a lot simpler, they clean the room by moving around it randomly with no specific pattern. They’re less efficient in that sense but at the end of the day they still get the work done.

I have my RoboVac clean my lower level of my apartment every night at 8PM. I’m in my TV room upstairs at 8PM so having the RoboVac work at that time doesn’t bother me. I don’t even hear it except for the beep when it wakes up to start cleaning, and another beep 90 minutes later when it calls it a night and comes back to its charging station. I mentioned earlier the first few days were rough and that turned out to be for a variety of reasons. The biggest issue I had was that the RoboVac dust storage was filling up very quickly and the rolling brushes underneath were getting clogged up with carpet hair. If that wasn’t an issue by itself, the RoboVac when low on battery shuts of the suction and heads home. But because my RoboVac storage was full it would cause it to leave a trail of dirt and dust balls on the way back to the charging station. I was having to clean after the RoboVac which was super annoying and was making me regret buying it. BUT, it turned out this wasn’t the RoboVacs fault. The reason it was filling up so quickly is because of the amount of dust and virgin carpet hair it was sucking up from under my large couch. My normal vacuum cleaner can’t reach under the couch but the RoboVac is low enough to get under there and clean properly. After a few days the dust container stopped overfilling and the RoboVac is working perfectly now. Every morning as part of my routine I now just empty the dust container which is usually around half full. The other issue I had when I first got it was making my place RoboVac friendly. It didn’t need a lot of work, I just had a few cables I needed to tuck away nicely so the RoboVac wouldn’t get stuck on it and I had to move one side table slightly away from the couch so that the RoboVac would have easier access. The RoboVac comes with strips you can stick on the floor if for example you don’t want it to wander into the kitchen or you want to keep it away from a certain area.

During this 24/7 lockdown my RoboVac has been my companion of a sort, kinda like how Tom Hanks had Wilson the Volleyball on Castaway. I now yell at my RoboVac and call it an idiot like I used to yell at my dog when it used to do something wrong. My RoboVac has a habit of knocking down my skateboard which I’ve got leaned up against the wall and then starts pushing it around like it’s playing with it. It’s kinda cute when it wants to play but noisy. I’ve only had my RoboVac get stuck once so far and when that happened my phone App notified me. It has no issues climbing carpets and even low objects. A lot of times it might get stuck on something and then it starts trying to push over it but after a while it gives up and goes backward freeing itself. I’m very impressed with it and I don’t regret getting it at all. I don’t even regret getting a smarter RoboVac since the 30C is doing a really great job. My black tiles tend to show dust easily but now they’re shiny all the time I love it.

If you’re interested in getting one, I got mine from Blink but it’s showing as sold out but A Store who are the Eufy dealers still has them in stock also for 92KD.

I haven’t posted a rant in years I think, but I’m really pissed off about two things, one that’s too late to be fixed, but the other one can still be.

The first thing I want to complain about is the way the lockdown was announced where it basically gave the whole population just a day to try and buy enough food for 3 weeks. That didn’t make any sense. The scenes I saw on Saturday were heartbreaking. It was survival, people tossed aside social distancing not because they wanted to, but because they were forced to. Supermarkets across the country were PACKED with large crowds, super long lines, and no social distancing. I shot the video below on Friday, BEFORE the lockdown announcement. It was a line for a mini-market down the street from my place so just imagine how long the lines were at major supermarkets across Kuwait on Saturday after the lockdown was announced. We don’t have a shortage of food in Kuwait nor a shortage of supermarkets, but the way this lockdown was announced late at night without having the proper infrastructure in place (like private supermarkets on moci.shop) or enough time for people to go out and stock up caused this chaos.

The second thing I’m really pissed off but is something that can easily be fixed is about how the information is being shared. 90% of the information is being shared only in Arabic. Why? I know Kuwait is an Arabic country so what? I’m Lebanese and I can barely read Arabic and I’ve lived all my life in Kuwait. What about the expats who aren’t Arab? What about the low-income workers who barely can communicate in their native tongue let alone read multiple languages? Kuwait is the home of many nationalities and in a crisis like this where it is important that every message gets across to everyone, you can’t have information being shared only in Arabic. You want everyone to use the moci.shop website to book appointments? Have it in multiple languages then. Right now if you visit the site its all in Arabic, even the option to change the language to English is in Arabic. At least have a tiny UK or American flag icon that people can click to translate.

You can’t disagree with me on this either, so don’t bother leaving a comment saying if you’re in an Arabic country you need to learn the language or gtfo. This pandemic isn’t the time for this. Right now the question should simply be HOW CAN WE GET THIS IMPORTANT INFORMATION OUT TO THE MOST NUMBER OF PEOPLE? And the answer is everything, needs to be published in multiple languages.

Instagram allows you to share multiple slides per post. Have the first slide in Arabic and then the next few slides in other languages. Hire people to do the translations, don’t have the money then ask for volunteers! And don’t just post on official channels. The MOH, MOI and other government agencies should coordinate with popular expat accounts like @kuwaitup2date and have important information published there. Go to where the people are and not just expect people to come to you.

Also, have all the information across all your media channels. I’m finding stuff for example on twitter.com/cgckuwait that isn’t on instagram.com/cgckuwait. Why? Why do I need to check all your social media channels to get all the info? Publish everything everywhere, it’s not hard to do.

Then you have other strange decisions. The visual I shared a while ago highlighting the different facilities that are available during the lockdown. The Arabic version was published as a permanent post in the @cgckuwait Instagram account while the English one was posted as a temporary story. Why? Why can’t both be stories and permanent posts? What if I missed your story today? So much stuff doesn’t make sense.

Just to be clear my issue isn’t just with the @cgckuwait account. All the issues I’ve mentioned above apply to all the official sources.

Anyway, I’m done complaining. Happy lockdown everyone.

Late last night private supermarkets became available as an option on the moci.shop website. Previously you could only book an appointment at the Coop, which was fine for low-density areas like Bayan and Mishref where the population is around 40,000. But Salmiya, for example, has a population of over 300,000 so sharing one Coop was not going to work.

I was actually super pissed about this because they had announced the lockdown BEFORE making private supermarkets available on the moci.shop website. This meant nobody could get a shopping appointment at the already fully booked Coops, so you ended up with the mass panic of the past two days where everyone was out scrambling to get enough food to store up for 3 weeks.

Anyway if you’ve never booked through the moci.shop website and want to know how it works, check out my previous post here.

ZAY is an eCommerce platform that has shifted its business model to serve small businesses during COVID19. With items ranging from lounge-wear to home-ware you can shop a variety of items and help Kuwaiti small businesses that are at the risk of shutting down for good.

ZAY sells these items for 0% commission: with the first ten days of Ramadan being flash sales for up to 70% off.

Help Kuwaiti small businesses survive corona, every purchase helps. Shop and help a Kuwaiti business.

If you are a small business and want to sell on ZAY, email us on [email protected]

Website: tryzay.com
Instagram: @try_zay

Below is another interesting story by John Beresford who used to live in Kuwait back in the 50s and 60s. This time it’s about The Burgan Blowout which I hadn’t heard about until I read his story. It’s a bit long but if you like old stuff related to Kuwait you’ll find it interesting.

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I am sure that there are quite a few people reading this who were in Kuwait after the Iraqis were driven out during the first Gulf War and who experienced the nightmare of the destruction of the oilfields when the Iraqis blew up so many oil wells. I don’t know what that was like, the pollution, the burning, I don’t know if the ground trembled and if people heard a constant moan which, on getting closer, became a roar. But I did experience Burgan Well 331 and as far as I can remember, these are my memories.

The Kuwaiti was the weekly magazine for KOC employees, printed in English and Arabic. The photo on the cover states that the relief well was drilled from a point 1526 feet away from the blowout – approx. 500m. Drilling from there they had to hit a pipe that was 9” wide and hopes that they could pump drilling mud down it to block the well. From the angle of the picture, I think you just do not get any idea of how big or powerful the flame was, but then I was only about 10 ½ years old and I had never experienced anything like this so I might be exaggerating.

To try and put the flames out they needed water, so a pipeline was built, working 24/7, to bring seawater to the well site. I don’t remember if it was 48” pipe or 36”, laid across the desert with every available person and piece of equipment on the job, and it was built in about 1 week. I am sure my father said that it was a week, or just over. Everything was thrown at getting this done. It was a lot of pipes but the steel could be transported flat on trucks and ‘spun’ (spirally welded) as it was laid, which made everything easier. The bulldozers went ahead and flattened the desert and scraped a track alongside which was graded and then the machines came along to build the pipeline.

I remember that at night the horizon was bright with the light of the flame. We lived in Ahmadi at 44/14th Avenue – I don’t know how far away Burgan was, but of course, us kids had to see if we could read by the light of the flame – we could, although at that age our eyes were a lot better than they are now and maybe we could have read by moonlight anyway. And we thought we could hear something, a type of low moan.

The well fire was big, but once the process started to put it out, it became the biggest tourist attraction in the whole of Kuwait and so a plan was put into place to let the public come and see it, but in a controlled manner, so that it was safe and so that no one got in the way. So one evening we got into the car (a little Ford Anglia, same as the car Harry Potter goes flying about in) and drove off to Burgan, and we found ourselves in a bit of a convoy. With my brother and sister I was excited, my mother less so. The red horizon stirred in her memories of 14-15 November 1940, when Coventry had been bombed and the old heart of the city completely destroyed by fire. She was a student nurse in Nottingham and was fire watching that night – she was on the roof of the hospital, with buckets of sand and water and a little pump, to look out for incendiary bombs that might land there and to try and put their flames out before they really got going. If it looked bad she had to raise the alarm. It sounds dangerous but she always maintained that the most dangerous part of it was not falling off the roof! Anyway, she had had a grandstand view of the horizon towards Coventry and saw it light up and just keep on burning, and she said that the well fire reminded her of that night. The destruction was so complete that the Germans coined a new word ‘coventrieren’ meaning to completely destroy a city.

As we drove on the moan became louder and dad asked if we could feel anything; the car felt odd. In fact, the force of the gas coming up, uncontrolled, through the well piping was causing the ground to vibrate and we were starting to feel this through about 5 miles away from the burning blowout. I thought we parked 5 miles away and walked to about 3 miles distance away but now I don’t think that was so, from the silhouette of the oil rig you can tell it is not 5 miles away. I am not sure if it is the relief rig that was about 500m away from the fire as there were quite a few rigs in the area anyway. We got out of the car and it was warm. Kuwait is always going to be warm by most people’s standards, but take away the climate and how we had felt when we went out to get into the car, and now it was warm. And we could feel the vibration through our shoes, into our legs, not big movements, not lurching ones as in an earthquake, but a constant vibration which, while it did not unbalance anyone, did feel odd.

We were grouped and taken to a viewing location, which was nearer. As we got closer the vibrating grew, the sound got louder and we had to speak more loudly, almost shouting, and the temperature increased to a level that was unpleasant. Our skin facing the flames got quite warm. The power coming out of the earth was extremely impressive and it was only one well, one 9” diameter hole, blown out. How many were burning after the 1st Gulf War? All the destruction must have been a scene from hell.

We then got rounded up, counted, and led back to our cars, we got into them, drove back home and our adventure was over. We did manage to take a few photographs and I attach 2 of them. The camera was an old, fold-out, bellows camera with no telescopic lens. I think these 2 pics were taken from the car park as in the originals I can just make out some vehicles. I have another picture that is comprised of 2 photos, a top and a bottom that actually do fit together – if I could find them I would post them – but they produce an image which is about twice the size of these, so I guess they were taken from the viewing area. Basically the same image, but bigger.

At this time I was back in Kuwait with my parents because it was the Christmas holidays. At the age of 9 years old I had been sent back to the UK to go to boarding school. The logic was that as dad was going to be working overseas, and because the KOC school – the Anglo American School – only took children up to the age of 13, I would have to go to boarding school when young in order to get taught for the Common Entrance exam which I needed to pass at the age of 13 to get to Public School (the English term for a private school that took children as borders until they were 18 and had done their exams to get to university. There were just about no State-run boarding schools back then). And at the time there might have been 1 school in Kuwait Town that took children up to 18 or so but it wasn’t clear if their exams would count towards a UK university entrance so boarding school at 9 it had to be. This meant that after the holidays I had to fly back to London in order to go back to school.

So, whatever day it was that I flew back, my parents took me to the airport, which was on the site of the Kuwait International Airport is now (I think) but it was the original one in that location before any updated version was built. Parents were allowed to sit with their children in the departure lounge until the flight was called. And as we were sitting there my father said ‘John, look over there’ and sitting with some companions was Red Adair himself, the guy who had been called in to put out the well fire. He was wearing a long-sleeved cotton shirt, collar unbuttoned, his trousers were over his cowboy boots and dad said ‘Look at him, see, he’s missing part of a finger’. And I looked, and yes, there was the end of a digit missing. In fact, there seemed to be several bits missing, there were assorted small scars, burn scars, I think there was a bit of an ear missing, he moved a bit differently to most people because he kept running into flames and heat and played with explosives but he must have had a good idea what he was doing because he was still alive. Several children went up to him and asked for his autograph, which he graciously gave to them, and he chatted to them even though he had such a tough reputation as someone who could not be killed. He allegedly earned a fantastic amount of money and his contract said that any oil company that called him in had to supply the equipment he wanted and after the job, he got to keep it and the oil company would store it for him until he needed it again. But basically, for KOC, it was a form of insurance. He and his team put their lives on the line to put out fires. Thank God they did!

Interesting Fact: Red Adair was brought back to Kuwait 26 years later in 1991 after the Iraqi invasion to cap the burning oil wells.

In 1991 Adair was asked to help cap the oil fires set by Iraqi troops fleeing Kuwait during the Persian Gulf War. Although it was thought that controlling these fires would take years to accomplish, Adair’s team capped 117 wells and aided other teams in completing the job in eight months. Adair retired from firefighting in 1994. Source

Note: Scans of The Kuwaiti magazine taken by SJM Banfield (if anyone knows him let me know!)

Update: Here is a photo of the Blowout taken from the Tarek Rajab Museum archives.

Alshaya has been quickly working on moving all their businesses online and as of today below are all the brands available to order from:

Online Sites
Bath & Body Works
Foot Locker
H&M
Mothercare
Potterybarn

Online Catalogs (Whatsapp Ordering on 1821212)
& Other Stories
AOC
Aveda
Boots
Charlotte Tilbury
Claire’s
Clinique
COS
Debenhams Cosmetics
Dr Vranjes
Etude House
Harvey Nichols Cosmetics
Harvey Nichols Ramadan
Jo Malone
Justice
Kurt Geiger
MAC
Milano
Miss Selfridge
Monki
Muji
Next
NYX
Oasis
Payless
The Body Shop
Top Shop
Victoria’s Secret
Victoria’s Secret Pink
Vavavoom
Vision Express

I really really like the idea of the online catalogs but only those my age or older might understand why. Back in the 80s before online shopping, the way we used to shop from the US was by mail-order. I think that’s how Aramex Shop & Ship started because they had this service as well. We used to get these large fat mail-order catalogs of US brands like Sears, JC Penny, Lands’ End etc.. and you’d place an order by mail and receive it a few months later. Very nostalgic.

A few years ago, a reader called John Beresford who used to live in Kuwait back in the 50s sent me some photos and a writeup in life in Kuwait back then. The posts turned out to be incredibly popular and crazily enough, a bunch of people who used to be kids growing up in Ahmadi back in the 50s started reconnecting again in the comments of those posts. Yesterday John got in touch with me again since he had found and scanned some old postcards of his dating from that era. He shared them with me along with some comments on each. As with the previous posts, John shares a lot of interesting insights and tidbits to life in Kuwait back in the 50s so please make sure you read his comments under the postcards.

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A couple of years ago I sent you some memories of life in Ahmadi in the 1950s.

I have found some old postcards, a couple are 1960’s, the rest must be the early 50s, maybe the 1940s. I am unsure when the British Residency became the British embassy or when the Naif Gate disappeared, but if you find out it might give a guide to dating them.

Jashanmal Kuwait City
Jashanmals have been around forever in the Gulf. We used the one in Ahmadi which like most other shops was moved to a new shopping center built in the early 1960s. I don’t remember the part of Ahmadi this was in, but I still remember the road system and I can even mentally drive there after more than 50 years! I recall the Indian manageress telling my mother that the inflatable globes she had ordered for the shop were useless as customs had cut the map of Israel out of each one!

British Agency, Kuwait Town
I am unsure when this was taken. I suspect Sir Percy Cox was still around, he was at the time of the Abadan Crisis -1952 I think- my mother was a nurse in MIS and got thrown out with everyone else when the AIOC (Anglo Iranian Oil Co) was nationalized, and was allowed 66lbs baggage allowance to go home to UK. She then signed up to join KOC working at the Nissen hut hospital at Magwa, between Ahmadi and what became the new airport.

Mina Al Ahmedi, South Jetty
This is a view towards the industrial area, with Ahmadi 5 miles in the distance, up the ridge that allowed the oil to flow under gravity down towards the refinery and the jetty. As the spherical LPG tanks are in the picture this is mid-1960’s. On the shore, just out of the pic on the left, is where the Boat Club (Small Boat Owners’ Association) and the yacht Club (Cumberland Yacht Club) were. Their little beaches were gradually surrounded by the KOC Industrial Area. The shoreline on the right wanders up towards Faaheel. The green building suspended over the sea was a facility for ships crew, there was a cafe, games room, basic shopping facilities and a barber which for a time my father used to take me to – he had a pass for the jetty. If a crewman was ill he could be moved up to the KOC hospital, The Southwell Hospital in Ahmadi. The little triangle of water in the foreground is where a whale, unfortunately, became trapped. It swam unexpectedly, perhaps following a tanker, and could not find a way out. Attempts to assist it proved futile and sadly it eventually died. I remember that people were allowed to come and see it when it was still swimming and surfacing, as no-one had seen a whale before. But what type it was, or what size, I don’t remember.

Oil Rig
Once these had been set up they were able to be moved (skidded) on tracks, towed by a team of bulldozers in harness. The desert was firm and basically flat and there wasn’t really anything in the way, so they were towed to where they were next needed. The pipes that took the oil away to the gathering centres, where it received an initial processing that involved getting rid of a lot of the gas (there was no market for LPG at the time) were drape over the desert and where a road had to go, the pipes were dug into trenches and the service road put over it. The service roads are graded desert that had crude oil sprayed on it and then the surface was rolled, with more oil added, and more rolling. They were the smoothest roads I have ever driven on, very quiet. They might have needed some repair after heavy rain, but usually only if they had been underwater since the oiled surface repelled light showers. With very heavy traffic (e.g. trailers with large pipes) the surface could become damaged with furrows where the trailer wheels had made a groove, and if you were in a car and a wheel caught it then it could get exciting, but as you were in the middle of nowhere it wasn’t as though you could hit anything. And if something did go wrong, you always had a supply of water with you, and someone knew you were on that route, and someone was expecting you.

I don’t have any comments for these. I guess they are early 1950s but I don’t know enough about American cars to make a judgment, and anyway, cars from that era seem to last forever. I guess nowadays most people have Japanese/Far Eastern cars but I remember a family trip by car from Ahmadi to Kuwait Town and back in about 1968/1969 and we decided to count the number of Volkswagen Beetles we saw; we nearly reached 900! They were so popular for a time, they were the basic car of choice for those who were not rich. Then after a while, they just disappeared.

This couldn’t have come at a better time, over the weekend I was working on my Alfa and realized I needed some tools that I didn’t have. I was trying to figure out where I could get them from when a friend messaged me to tell me that Ace Hardware was now online. I checked their Instagram account and didn’t find anything about it but when I did a google search I found AceKuwait.com

The first day I couldn’t order anything since it seems there was an issue with their website but I tried again yesterday and it worked. I think they’re still in a soft launch phase which is why they haven’t announced it.

Then over the weekend I also found out the Bloomingdale’s website was now live as well. I was looking for Grown Alchemist hand creams since Etheco were sold out and ended up at the Bloomingdales website. They also were out of Grown Alchemist hand creams but they’re stocked up on other brands.

It’s pretty impressive how both these places were able to adapt and move their stores online in such a short period of time. I know West Elm is also coming online pretty soon and other than that maybe the only other place I’d like to see go online is probably Sephora. Hand sanitizers are drying up my hands a lot so all I have been doing is buying different hand creams and hand masks to counter the effects. Oh and if Bin Nisf moved online that would also be great.

What store do you want to see online?

Note: The Aafaq Bookstore website is now working and you can use the code KAFD for free delivery in Kuwait except for Sabah Al-Ahmad residential area and Ali Sabah Al-Salem.

Update: Bin Nisf just went online a few hours ago, perfect timing! Link

Yesterday they started barricading and fencing up Jleeb and Mahboula as part of an area lockdown in hopes of preventing the spread of the Coronavirus. Nobody will be allowed to leave those areas without permission.

Both those areas contain a lot of unskilled workers and you could notice the effect of this lockdown pretty much right away. The gas station I frequent the most on the Gulf Road had only one worker this morning. Even the mini Sultan Center Express at that station was closed. When I asked the only employee working there about this, he told me it was because the rest of the employees were stuck in Jleeb.

Should be interesting how this will play out and if it will eventually be implemented in other areas.

Green Rubber Recycling is a local initiative where they recycle used tires to create a variety of rubber tiles including fitness ones. I found out about it by mistake while helping someone who was looking for workout mats and thought it was a very smart idea. Loads of people are working out from home at the moment so the GreenRub fitness tiles are a good way of converting a home space into a mini gym.

If you have neighbors under you it’s a good way of silencing your workouts but even if you don’t have neighbors under you, having a rubber surface provides cushioning to your joints during workouts and you also won’t worry as much about dropping your weights on the floor.

Their fitness tiles start at KD6 for a square meter and you can get more information on their online shop or by visiting their Instagram @greenrubq8

As part of the new safety measures, they’re limiting the number of people inside co-op’s at any one time, and every customer will also have their temperature taken at the entrance. The picture above was taken at the Mishref Co-op where they’ve set up chairs outside for customers waiting to enter the supermarket.

Because everyone is trying to stay at home right now, I realized it was the perfect time to post an updated version of my local shopping websites list. I’m sure I’ve missed a few so if there are any local websites which you think I should add, let me know in the comments.

Categories (click link to jump to the section)
Babies / Children
Beauty / Self Care
Books
Car Accessories
Coffee
Computers
Electronics
Fashion
Flowers / Perfume
Food Products
Furniture
Hardware
Hobbies
Homeware / Kitchenware
Lifestyle / Accessories
Music
Pets
Pharmacies
Phones & Accessories
Photography / Video
Plants and Garden Supplies
Sports
Stationary
Supermarkets
Toys / Board Games
Video Games
Other

Babies / Children
Bonboni’s
Dinoo
Ivy Babdies
Mothercare
Oleana Boutique
Sniggles

Beauty / Self Care
Apotheca Beauty
Bath & Body Works
Bloomingdales
Creamat
Etheco
Jothen
K7L
Klarif
L’Occitane
Rskin

Books
Aafaq Bookstore
Books Room
Brilliant Company
Books for Cancer
Claudia Al Rashoud
Litterae Used Bookshop
Page Turner
Qasr Al-Thaqafa
Red Balloon Books
Saint Books
The English Bookshop

Car Accessories
Auto Depot
Garage Shuwaikh
Garmin
Mafra
Motorworks

Coffee
48 East
Caffeine
Coffee Tools
Qahwety
Stock Room

Computers
Alpha Store
AryCart
Cameoo
Digits
Gait
Personal Computer Center
Quadra
Smartek
Sunmoon
Want it Buy it

Electronics
3RoodQ8
Adawliah
Ali Abdulwahab Al Mutawa
Best
Blink
Eureka
EVA
Garmin
H&S Store
Jashanmal
RTC
X-Cite

Fashion
Alostoura
Bloomingdales
Casio
Centerpoint
Crocs
Dog House Collective
Fjällräven
Footlocker
Grain
H&M
Hind
Local Tees
My Dikaan
Nalbes
Our Trend
Pink Moon
Sprayground
Thahab
Thouqi
Zara

Flowers / Perfume
Arablly
Beidoun Online
Beauty
Bleems
Boutiqaat
Floward
Souq Perfume

Food Products
Alaman Coop
Baqala
Blue Passion
e-Baqala
eGroccery
Exotic Snax
FAME
Furdtk
Gourmet ME
Gourmet Shelf
Healthy Shop
Ikil
Kolita
Natureland
Sinbad Filipino Store
Taw9eel
The Approved Market

Furniture
Abyat
IKEA
My Athath
Pottery Barn
Safat Home
The ONE
West Elm

Hardware
Ace Hardware
Al Qatami Fire Fighting Equipment
Bin Nisf
I Buy Safety
Jawad AlSaffar
Makhazan
Makita
Mawady
Royal Tools
Safety International
Sanam

Hobbies
7erafy
Al Zame
Arts & Crafts
Camp N Sea
Dr Cue Billard World
Explorers Base
Ikarus
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The Horse Co
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Homeware / Kitchenware
Lawazm
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Caravan
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Ecru
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Ontime
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theblockdown
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Music
Adawliah
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Pets
Pet Center
Pet House
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Pharmacies
Alessa
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Pharma Zone
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Phones & Accessories
A Store
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Huawei
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Switch
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35MM
AAB World
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CRATE
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Plants and Garden Supplies
Bio Hydro
Grow
Mashatel
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Sports
53 Sports
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Ananda
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Champion
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Perform Athletics
ProSports
Q8 Kite Boarding
Sportsman
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The Horse Co
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Wawan

Stationary
Maktaba
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Supermarkets
Lulu
On Cost
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Toys / Board Games
Board Games Q8
Bricks
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Good Game
Ufff

Video Games
Alfuhod
AX Store
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ComplexQ8
Feesha
GamesQ8
Game Store
Level Up
ProGaming
Retro Games
Taw9eel
Xcite

Other
As Seen on TV (Random Stuff)
Sheeel (Daily Deal)
UTC (Department Store)
Yoghi (Office/School Supplies)

Due to the coronavirus, the Garden of Lights Festival that was taking place at Al Shaheed Park had to end early. So if you were planning to go to see it over the next few days then you missed out.

Post by Tarek J

While preparing my obligatory year-end list for the best films of 2019, I figured it only relevant to reflect on the past decade as we entered 2020. In doing so, I decided to do a little extra work this year and give you guys a few lists leading up to my “best of 2019” , starting with the 15 best films of the decade 2010-2019. Before jumping in, let’s just state the obvious and say that this is an impossible task as every year brings us tons of great films, so take ten years and select this handful was way more stressful than I imagined:

15) Under the Skin
14) Roma
13) Parasite
12) Arrival
11) The Grand Budapest Hotel

10) Inception
Every decade or so comes a film that catches the audience off guard and breaks what they think is possible with cinema. In the 90’s, it was watching Trinity escape the agents in the opening of The Matrix that made us all realize we were in for something we’ve never seen before (and the rest of the film just got more incredible). In the 00’s, it was watching Sméagol have a conversation with his alter ego Gollum in The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers. And now in the 10’s, it’s watching a zero-G fight happening in a rotating hallway in Christopher Nolan’s Inception that defined the shift in cinema. From the bombastic trailer (which launched a genre of horn blasting Bwaaam trailer soundtracks), to the incredibly complex plot, the vast visuals, and the notional core in the film, Inception became one of the most unforgettable movie-going experiences for all who watched it. Some can argue there are better films that deserve this slot, but none were as effective or influential as this.

9) Amour
Moving on from the gigantic Inception, my number 9 is the tiny and intimate masterpiece from Austrian auteur Michael Hanneke, Amour. A heartbreaking and harrowing tale of love under the worst circumstances, Amour was one of the few foreign films of the decade that crossed over to the mainstream due to nothing more than its cinematic perfection. Equally shocking and moving, it’s a landmark in foreign cinema and the best film in a filmmakers impressive career.

8) Moonlight
Another small film, made famous for being the actual Oscar winner in 2018 although La La Land had been mentioned by mistake first, Moonlight bring the introduction of an entirely new voice to cinema, Barry Jenkins, The film is beautiful, touching, cool, stylish and different than most other films out there, the cinematography is gorgeous, but it’s the raw and real emotions on display that elevate this film and makes it one of the very few Best Picture winners that actually deserved it.

I just found out from a reader that some of my articles are being republished in the Arab Times. The thing is nobody from Arab Times contacted me about this so I’m not sure if this is the first time they’ve done it or something they’ve been doing regularly. Some of the articles have even been edited even obviously without my permission.

I’m having a hard time deciding if this is funny or just sad…

Thanks Adam